As therapists we know we need therapeutic support for the work we do. Or, at least our training taught us this. Not all of us get therapy consistently. Our heavy lifting out in the field with our clients can cost us a lot on the emotional, physical, and relational levels. It takes a lot of energy to finance our work and to hold onto ourselves in the face of the stories we hear and hold, as well as the trauma we experience vicariously. Regular personal therapy, good supervision and peer support, very high levels of self-care, and scheduling real time off (and, no, I’m not talking about conferences, folks) are some of the things we can do to stave off burnout and maintain our own healthy stability.

As Therapists We Don't Require Good Self-Care, We Require Extraordinary Self-Care.

As a depth-oriented Marriage and Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I know how important it is to take care of myself. If I don’t take adequate care, things can start to get ugly. I like to joke around saying “It’s not my private practice that burns me out, it’s the rest of my life!” And it feels true. But here’s the thing, our lives can impact our work in the room and our work can and does impact our lives and relationships outside the office. Really, our need to Stay Awake to ourselves, our bodies, our work, and our lives is quite extraordinary. We need to stay awake for our clients, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. It requires diligence and a certain amount of humility, as well.

The whole trying to take care of the world thing is a big job. Just because we know what good self-care looks like and teach clients how to care for themselves, does not mean we do the work of self-care on our own behalf, or do so consistently. This is one reason I dove into the three-year Somatic Experiencing training all those years ago. I knew my body and mind were taking a beating and at the same time, I had a deep respect for what the body/mind connection could accomplish in terms of promoting healing and wellbeing. Working somatically, both on the professional and personal level, is one way I build resiliency into my nervous system and my body. Somatic work now forms a cornerstone for caring for both my clients and myself.

What is Somatic Experiencing?

It’s likely you’ve heard of it at some point, as it’s been around for a long time, now. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a dynamic biologically based trauma modality. SE was developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine over the course of over 45 years of interdisciplinary studies drawing on the fields of psychology, biology, stress physiology, ethology, neuroscience, medical biophysics, and indigenous healing practices. Somatic Experiencing emerges from the best elements of research science, therapeutic application, and traditional healing techniques. Specifically, Somatic Experiencing tracks the subtle sensations of the body to facilitate the release of trauma shock, the primary driver in the formation of PTSD, as well as early developmental attachment wounds and trauma. The underlying viewpoint of SE suggests the body holds all the experiences it has encountered, sometimes becoming stuck in the overwhelm of fight, flight, and freeze response. In SE, supporting the completion of incomplete survival responses in the body forms the basis of healing.

Did I mention I’m an Anxiety Reduction Specialist?

I know anxiety from the inside out. Oh. Yes. I. Do. I’ve spent many decades honing my own Anxious Habit to a fine edge and another decade plus learning how to promote anxiety reduction and healing for my clients and myself. If you’re an anxious caretaker then you’re exactly who I sit with every day, all day. In my office we’re working with anxiety from multiple viewpoints, using a variety of mind/body interventions, and doing everything we can to disrupt this anxious mental and neurological pattern of behavior. A lot of my clients are struggling with the kind of anxiety that not only has them popping out of their skins, but their last therapist was overwhelmed as well. You and I know nearly all our clients are anxious, no matter whatever else they are presenting with—my clients are just more anxious. And many of them don’t want to use meds. My holistically oriented, body/mind aware practice can sometimes seem like their second home.

Somatic Experiencing is a huge part of how I work with Anxious Folk.

You may know this from your own experience of your body or from your work with high-anxiety clients: our bodies are always chock full of sensation. Every body is, if we’re listening even half way close. Yet, Anxious Folk are experiencing still higher levels of sensation, higher levels of activation in general, and may be extremely and fully activated by any sensation they feel. I’ve had anxious clients who were initially unable to tolerate the sensation of relaxation. Letting go of their vigilant alertness, even for a moment, felt too unsafe. For the most anxious of us, anything unfamiliar is going to be triggering. The thoughts we anxious types are thinking fuel overwhelming and discomforting sensations within the body, which in turn triggers more anxious thoughts, and so on and so on. It’s a nasty endless cycle. Somatic Experiencing is a perfect tool for lowering the level of anxious experience in the body while learning to be with the powerful sensations anxiety produces.

But why does any of this matter to therapists?

We’re a pretty anxious lot, us therapists. I like to say I’ve taken my anxious care-taking “pathology,” reined it in, contained and constrained it within the scope and bounds of my helping profession, and put it to work for my clients and myself. It’s a great plan, as long as I make sure to take really good care of myself and do my personal work. It’s a recipe for disaster if I don’t. True enough, Somatic Experiencing is a great tool for helping to identify sensation in the body, for creating more safety and capacity around feeling uncomfortable or strong sensations without becoming overwhelmed. We could even say SE is a form of desensitization therapy, lowering the level of anxiety overall while acclimating us to strong and potentially overwhelming sensation. Somatic Experiencing can be a powerful teacher regarding how to self-soothe appropriately, even in the most difficult situations. So, right there, it’s a great therapy for anxious clinicians. In fact, it’s the bomb for developing a deeper capacity for self-soothing, self-regulation, and building resiliency. What works for the people I work with works for clinicians, too.

Many therapists Carry a great deal of Unresolved trauma in their nervous systems.

The truth of the matter is most therapists aren’t merely anxious. As a group, we’re also likely to carry a significant amount of trauma history that not only contributes to our anxious habit formation, but is potentially acting out in our lives and on our bodies in a variety of ways. In my experience, many of therapists arose from homes where there were personality disorders, attachment disruptions, addictions, and/or chaos. Many of us were raised to be therapists. We grew up too early as anxious caretakers and vigilant survivors. This doesn’t even account for the amount of trauma we may have encountered over the course of our lives. This chaos, trauma, and attachment disruption is playing out in our bodies now, showing up as exaggerated startle responses, muscle and joint pain, anxiety, insomnia, autoimmune disorders, irritability, personality traits, and challenges with identifying and maintaining our boundaries. Our self-worth is often compromised and expresses problematically in everything from the relationships we pick to the difficulty we can have in setting, maintaining, and receiving our full fees or appropriate salaries.

And then there’s the powerful impact of Vicarious Trauma.

The destructive issue of vicarious trauma, so accumulative in nature, is one of the minefields of our profession. Vicarious trauma, that way in which we hold, contain, and experience our clients’ traumas within our own psyches and bodies, can be very damaging. It can be significant and yet so stealthy as it creeps up on you over time. Vicarious Traumatization can also be the primary and subtle contributor to burning out. In a big way. You don’t have to be working with First Responders, tsunami survivors, and Victims of Violence to become vicariously traumatized. Enough heartbreak and stories of broken or dysfunctional families will wear you down over time. There are big T and little T traumas in everyone’s lives. You’re sitting with it all. Attachment disruption trauma is a violent thing in terms of its overriding impact and it is also something you and your clients are dealing with day in and day out. Vicarious traumatization is a risk for all clinicians, not just those working with populations we characterize as highly traumatized. When we talk about therapist burnout, it’s much more significant than just being tired and needing a vacation. A little more yoga, another glass of wine, or a weekend in Santa Barbara, is not going to cut it. And it’s so important to address. Burnout is the primary way therapists trip up and run amok with the BBS. Burned out, we lose our ability to be awake to ourselves, our boundaries may soften, and our decisions may falter. It’s one of the biggest professional liability risks we can encounter. Not to mention, it can drive you out of the field you once loved. Burnout can wreck havoc in your relationships at home. It can take your body down, as well.

Somatic Experiencing Is an ideal therapy for therapists.

The need for therapists to have full access to their bodies is profound. Sitting in the chair with our clients requires all our senses to be fully engaged. The more elegant your connection to your own nervous system, the more enhanced is your ability to be with, hear, and mirror your client. It’s a professional and clinical advantage to be tuned in to your own nervous system. If many therapists are generally wired to the anxious caretaking side of life, as I suspect is true, then any form of self care that lowers the physical and emotional impact of anxiety, lowers the level of anxiety overall, empowers one to be able not only tolerate their feelings of anxiety, but to flow with them, and helps smooth out the nervous system is going to be highly valuable for therapists on the personal level. As Wounded Healers we’ve been engaged in our personal work for a long time. We’ve landed in a rich field of professional work and study that not only encourages and allows us to grow over the course of a lifetime, but also requires it. Doing the work of healing the manner our experience has been stored in the body and is impacting us on a daily basis is a huge bonus for therapists and care providers of all kinds. It’s not as if we haven’t been awake to and working “our stuff” for years. We have, but if we’ve only done so through insight oriented talk therapy, we may be missing out on the profound, juicy way our bodies can facilitate release, healing, and wellbeing. When it comes to releasing trauma from the body, Somatic Experiencing is much more laser in its approach than talk therapy ever could be or was designed to be. Both are supremely valuable. Immensely so. One, SE, can be remarkable at finishing the task and dealing with those hard to reach areas for more complete healing.

What if you have a talk therapist you love and trust already?

There’s no need to give them up. My own primary therapist is someone I’ve worked with since grad school and even before I trained as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I’m not about to give him up. Therefore, my personal somatic work is done as an adjunct therapy for now. Unlike traditional talk therapy, where working with two therapists at the same time is usually counterproductive and for the therapists, potentially unethical, Somatic Experiencing can often be incorporated as a collaborative adjunct treatment along side an ongoing and established traditional therapy. Somatic Experiencing can form your primary healing modality, can be the work you are doing for this moment to deal with specific issues, and can also be an adjunct therapy in addition to your traditional talk therapy. Any of these applications are very common, viable, and rewarding. If you have questions about Somatic Experiencing and how it might benefit you in your healing and self-care, as well as sharpen your own clinical skills, please give me a call. I love to talk about it. Obviously! In fact, it’s hard to stop talking about. I have to admit, I’m biased. In my experience, anyone with a nervous system is going to benefit from some Somatic Experiencing support. It’s just what our bodies find delicious. I love working with therapists and interns. If you’d like to try it on for size, even for a session or two, I have some spots on my calendar for you now.

Somatic. It’s a big word that means “body.” You have one. We can use it to create a happier more connected life for you.

Here’s the deal, a lot of us are a lot more anxious than we need or want to be. On top of that, most people aren’t addressing it at all. Why? Well, at least half the Anxious Folk I know haven’t figured out they’re struggling with anxiety in the first place. Makes perfect sense. I’m sure I was the last person on earth to figure out how tightly wound I was. About everything. I remember turning to a dear friend and saying, “I guess I’m pretty anxious.” It was actually a shocker for me to come to that conclusion. “You think?” she said, casting a mock arched brow my way. Wow. So, it was like that, was it? It’s more than possible it’s that way for you, too. You may be the last to know, but everyone around you figured it out. Ages ago. Sigh! If you don’t even know you’re suffering with anxious overwhelm (maybe because this has been your “normal” for so long you don’t realize it’s possible to feel any other way), how can you start taking care of it? How would you ever even know your anxious experience is totally trashing your relationships and getting in the way of so much of what you say you want in life? There are a few telltale signs. As a therapist and Anxiety Coach, I work with Anxious Folk every day in my office, helping them identify the way their anxious thoughts are playing out in their relationships and unlearning the Anxious Habit. Here are some of the ways Anxiety may be trashing our relationships:

1. Afraid of getting left behind, we’ll settle for less than we want. If we’ve been living with anxiety and anxious experience long enough, it doesn’t matter how competent we are professionally, we’ll often feel inadequate and unlovable. That fearful feeling we’ve been dealing with has taught us life doesn’t always go our way. Our negative, fortune-telling mind is whispering we’re going to get left out of the Happy Ever After Gig and we better grab the first one who comes along and seems to tolerate us, since that might be the only chance we have. Anxious Folk will sometimes sell themselves short. On top of that, our anxious experience may have numbed us out to our ability to enjoy life, perceive our own desires, likes, and dislikes, and we’ll end up fulfilling someone else’s dreams, rather than identifying our own wants and needs. On top of that, we’re Stellar Care-Takers. If you need us, we feel loved (yes, we founded the whole Co-dependent thing—it’s our tribe). So, we’re sometimes paired with people who demand a lot out of us, don’t give back, and are even less interested in identifying our needs than we are. Perfect match. Not.2. We’ll find a way to sit out the Love Game. Anxious Folk are wired to be caring and considerate. We’re wired to be in relationship and yet, having had our hopes dashed once or twice, fearing another loss or another poor choice, we’ll find all kinds of ways of opting out of relationship in the first place. We’re masters at delaying gratification. Anxious Folk are champs at rejecting ourselves before we can be rejected by anyone else. Anticipating rejection and judgment, we fail to engage. We talk ourselves out of the game and can take up a permanent-feeling seat on the sidelines. We’ll buy every negative explanation we can find for why we’re undesirable, unpairable, or never likely to find our needle in the haystack. We especially love statistics that predict relationship failure for our particular group and cling to that as truth and a reason not to “try” in the first place. My anxious clients have probably quoted me a hundred Internet articles about why they’ll never find love. So let me say one thing about that right now. It’s crap! It only takes one. One. And there are dozens and dozens, perhaps thousands, of great matches for you out there. 3. Premature Evacuation. Suppose we find our way into a relationship, what is the first thing Anxious Folk do next? Relax into coupled bliss? Chill out on the beach with the sunset and their love? No freakin’ way! And if so, that whole bliss thing is short-lived. Our habit of anxious vigilance, catastrophic thinking, and the co-occurring experience of low-self esteem and feelings of unworthiness kick into high gear and we start worrying about how this relationship will end. We’re accomplished at projecting the worst-case scenario to our Happy Ending. Right off, my Anxious Folk will start fussing about “When is he/she going to leave me?” “Is this The One?” “How will I ever know if this is the right one for me?” “What if they leave me?” “What if this relationship is another big mistake?” “Am I going to get hurt?” “How can I keep them?” “What if I’m trusting the wrong person with my heart?” “How is this relationship going to end?” “I KNOW they want to leave me!” These powerful and very real feelings are so intolerable, I’ll find Anxious Folk solving the problem for themselves by prematurely evacuating and leaving the relationship. At least that way they know how it’s going to end and they’re in control. So, first comes that big wave of relief. And then the grief and longing. No fun at all.4. We’re checkers. While it’s not true all Anxious Folks are habitual stalkers of their loved ones, it’s pretty much true that habitual stalkers are anxious. Social media was created in such a way as to completely fuel and facilitate our anxious suspicions. All day. And all night. If you find yourself checking your loved one’s location tags, reading for which good looking girl or guy has “liked” their Facebook posts, getting pissed if one of their friends has just changed their profile pic to one with a bikini, or you find yourself compelled to endlessly comb through photos of all their old ex’s in their old Facebook photo albums, checking the phone, hacking the email, combing through their search histories, you’re suffering from one of the more virulent anxious relationship killers. If you’re really in a relationship with someone you can’t trust, get the heck out now. Don’t waste another minute or tear here. If you’re not, there are ways to learn how not to be controlled by your anxiety. All those anxious accusations and “Where are you?” “Who are you with?” texts wear relationships down. This pattern shows up in my office a lot with couples I work with, and not just the twenty-something crowd, either. It's potentially a very destructive behavior.5. “Do you love me? Really love me?” Another version of checking behavior. Lots of Anxious Folk feel deeply unlovable and flawed. Although the people around them typically adore and value them highly, Anxious Folk may have a hard time letting that good stuff soak in. Often trained to perform for love, or feeling that they must earn love, Anxious Folk have a hard time feeling adequate or worthy. The uncomfortable intolerable feelings we’ve been discussing, point by point, come to a boil and an anxious person just has to break down and ask, “Do you love me? Do you really, really love me?” So understandable, as it can seem like the only way to get some relief from that nagging feeling you’re just not good enough to actually be secure in their love.6. We’re caretakers in all our relationships. Before we learn to set appropriate boundaries, Anxious Folk are going to be giving, giving, giving, at our own expense. We can completely exhaust ourselves this way. For one thing, saying “No,” feels truly wrong, so Anxious Folk will find a way to say yes, no matter how over-committed they are already. This can lead to stress at home, an inability to save enough time for oneself or for attending to our primary relationships. Chances are, we learned very early we were valued for our extraordinary contributions and self-sacrificing ways. This was likely our role in our family of origin. And it’s a little addicting. The thing is, we neglect ourselves, can neglect our loved ones, and we end up burned out, resentful, and martyred if we don’t learn to live another way. Not very attractive. And very painful. It will sound and feel a lot like this, “I do and do and do for others, but no one does for me.” We may fail to notice the many ways we push away help and insist on doing things on our own. We isolate by accident, more often than not. Our care-taking can lead us to push our way into our loved one’s lives as we “help” and suggest and control things so it all goes the way we know it should. We can find ourselves wanting everything to work out perfectly and painlessly for everyone we care about and we KNOW we’re the ones to make it happen. We’re not ones to sit back and let things work out on their own. Being in charge of the world is a big job, so we end up tired and cranky. Our loved ones may end up feeling managed, controlled, mothered, infantilized, and resentful. Without meaning to we can signal our loved ones that we quietly feel they are incompetent and not up to the task of living their own lives. Yikes! To make matters worse, it can be very, very stressful for us when our loved ones are struggling in their lives and we feel compelled to fix it, but we can’t. Anxious Folk are consistently shocked to learn their fussing and managing is driving their families bonkers. It’s hard to let go of our primary habit of soothing ourselves and expressing love, but our relationships can benefit enormously as we learn to trust our friends and family to live their lives and we get busy living ours. That’s actually our first job, right?7. Our fears and limitations can begin to burden our relationships. Sometimes Anxious Folk are adept at pushing through a lot of the discomfort they feel, even though this is one way we actually raise our level of overall anxious experience. Being strong in all the wrong ways. Occasionally, anxiety will start manifesting in more significant and intrusive ways. Anxious Folk may find themselves too anxious to drive, to socialize, to go on vacation or to the market. The anxious chatter in our minds may spill over into constant rumination we share with our partners. Loving partners and family members find themselves picking up more and more slack, driving their anxious loved one everywhere, being constantly available to soothe out the rough edges, offering one reasoned argument after another about why things aren’t as bad as they seem. This can lead to exhaustion in the relationship. And resentment. At the same time, Anxious Folk may end up thinking their feelings are being minimized and dismissed. We often feel misunderstood. No one wants it to be this way, but couples can get caught in an anxious cycle and not know how to disrupt or change it. On top of that, although it may show up in different ways, Anxious Folk will often pair up with each other. Double Trouble. 8. Our anxiety may show up as criticalness or irritability. High levels of anxiety are exhausting. Most Anxious Folk have toughed it out for way too long by the time they get to my office and it’s taken a toll on them and their relationships. Wired to be some of the most tenderhearted, observant, jump-to-help people on the planet, they may also end up snappish, irritable, and critical. Unexpressed and unexplored emotions will find their way out in unproductive ways. Women may find themselves labeled Harpies, Shrews, Bitches, and men will be called controlling, loud, angry A-holes, as well as dark and withdrawn. Anxiety can form a wedge in our relationships if left unattended.9. Perfectionism. In an effort to control our emotions and self-sooth, Anxious Folk may practice high-levels of perfectionism. We’ll tend to be highly self-critical and it can leak out on others, too. We may hold others to high standards and hold ourselves to impossible standards. It can be a hard thing to live with in oneself or in one’s partner or family member.10. Controlling. Can’t sleep if you’re not in control of the money? Have a hard time handing tasks off to others at work or at home? Do you live by that old standby, “If you want something done right, you might as well do it yourself?” Are you sure you know how your spouse, friend, sibling or child should be handling something? Everything? Even if they don’t ask for your opinion? It’s a hard thing to let go of, the idea that you need to manage it all, but your relationships will all be happier the day you step back and let the world roll by a bit more.11. It can be hard to figure out how to relax and have fun. A lot of Anxious Folk grew up way too fast, sometimes carrying a lot of physical and emotional responsibility in their families of origin. We don’t always know how to play. We don’t always know what we enjoy doing or we’ve lost connection with our passions and interests. Our response to life is to keep moving, move fast, and keep ahead of all those anxious thoughts. Some of us are the original Energizer Bunnies. Our partners may have a much better handle on having fun, may give themselves a lot more permission to do so, and we can resent them for it. At the same time, they think their anxious partner can be a stick in the mud. This dynamic can lead to a real stuckness in the relationship.It’s true, unchecked anxiety can exact a big toll on our ability to have and sustain happy relationships. Anxiety can get you into and keep you in the wrong relationship, keep you out of the relationship game altogether, or scare you into leaving before you even know who you’re with and what your relationship can evolve into. You can literally lose out on love because of your anxious thoughts. Your anxious habit can lead you to be exhausted by the level of care-taking and managing you feel you need to do in order to be in relationship to the point that any friendship or relationship prospect feels overwhelming and exhausting because you’re used to working too damned hard at it all. You may find or feel exploited without realizing the way you set yourself up to feel that way. Because it’s too hard to say “No,” you may hide out and isolate as a form of self-preservation. I get it. Your current relationships and partner may be burdened by your struggles to calm yourself and deal with your stress, anxiety, and fears. It may feel impossible to quiet your anxious racing thoughts. Yes, it can be overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. You learned how to be anxious as a way of coping with life back in the day. You may have learned to take care of everyone else around you and sacrifice yourself in the process. That may be what feels right to you. It was a brilliant strategy then, it just sucks big time now. For one thing, it’s no fun. For another, it’s just too much work. The good news is you learned how to be anxious and you can unlearn anxiety. I see people do it every day in my office and in their lives. It’s possible to slide out of Anxiety’s control, embrace and engage in life more freely, rediscover your innate sense of play, and find a new way to flow with everything. That’s what I call Freedom. You can choose more freedom, a little bit at a time, a little bit more every day. With enough support and education, you can unchoose anxiety and choose peace. Now.

Are you suffering with stress and anxiety? You’re not alone. Lots of people are. Sometimes your every day stress can slip over into outright anxiety and the next thing you know, your anxiety is running the show. Left to its own devices, anxiety can create havoc in your life, wreck your sleep, disrupt work and social life, exhaust your mind with endless loops of worried thought, and generally make you miserable. I specialize in anxiety reduction in my private practice psychotherapy office and coach people daily in how to reduce their symptoms. The fact is there are a few things you can do on your own to improve the situation. You can actually take steps right this minute that will give you some relief today.1. Cut the caffeine. I know that’s a toughie, but it’s well worth the effort. Caffeine doesn’t cause all your anxiety, but it will make the anxiety you are experiencing worse and can set you up for heightened anxiety and even panic attacks. On top of that, caffeine will get in the way of any other anxiety reducing remedies you employ. Why? Caffeine can ape anxiety in your body. It raises your heart, respiration, and perspiration rates. Caffeine can give you butterflies in your tummy and bring on the shakes. True, it may sharpen the mind, but so does anxiety, and caffeine can contribute to racing thoughts and speech. Caffeine mimics anxiety well enough that it can actually tip you right over into panic attack in the right situation. You’ll find caffeine in coffee, of course, all those energy drinks you love, tea, and, yikes! chocolate. Set it aside now or start cutting down by introducing half-calf, first and decaf later. The caffeine withdrawal headache shouldn’t last for more than a couple of days. Stimulants of any kind are not your friend when you are experiencing heightened levels of anxiety.2. Exercise. You know this intuitively. Vigorous exercise, or even gentle walking, can do a lot to bring down your anxious experience. That said, I will often find people, particularly men, who’s primary way of dealing with anxiety is to run it off in the gym. There will be a point when exercise alone isn’t going to make enough difference, particularly if you’re not addressing the cause of your anxious state. In the meantime, exercise is great way to raise all those feel good hormones, reduce anxiety, and raise your positive mood.

3. Breathing. I’m sure you’ve heard, “Just relax and take a deep breath.” If that was all there was to managing anxiety, you wouldn’t be reading this post and I’d be out of business. Those of us who are anxious tend to be shallow breathers. It is deep, slow breathing into our bellies that will help to calm our systems best. One such form of deep breathing is Diaphragmatic Breathing. Do a quick Google search on it and you will fine detailed directions on multiple sites. One very complete explanation can be found in this YouTube video.4. Talk back to anxiety. Our anxious, negative, repetitive, catastrophizing thoughts are telling us that nothing is going to work out and that worrying about it all is somehow going to magically solve it. Our worrisome thoughts are almost always going to feel true and real to us when we are caught in our anxiety cycle. Here’s the deal, your mind is actually designed to be negative. Searching for potential problems and negative outcomes is a survival skill hardwired into the oldest parts of your brain. The anxious survived. You and I are the result. Your innate anxiety mechanisms were never meant to run the show, however. When you’re stuck in persistent anxious spirals of thought, it’s a great idea to start talking back. Just noticing your are telling yourself an anxious scary story is a good place to start. Challenging the validity of that story is another great step. Actively questioning whether your story is the most likely outcome is another way of challenging your anxious thoughts. If it’s a “what if” worst case scenario line of thinking, it’s not based in reality. In short, don’t believe everything you think.

5. Pick your next thought. You can’t pick your first thought, but you can pick the next one. Making a conscious effort to drop positive thoughts and responses back into your mind is an important self-soothing and re-balancing tool. Studies report we are having 60,000 to 600,000 unique thoughts a day and an overwhelming majority of those thoughts aren’t only the same thoughts we had yesterday, but they are negative. Working with your anxiety is going to require you to start swimming against that tide and consciously reaching for positive thoughts. You might want to make a list of these to read and add to daily. Plug into streams of positive media. Pick reading material that uplifts you. It’s a numbers game and you’re playing to win when you are deliberate in reaching for the positive.

6. Get enough sleep. Here, in the US, we’re a sleep-deprived nation. In fact, we pride ourselves on how little sleep we can get by with. On top of that, your run away anxiety may be disrupting your ability to sleep or to awaken refreshed. Start by planning for adequate sleep. For most adults, this is 7 to 8 hours a night. Creating a soothing sleep routine is one way of promoting sleep. This can include unplugging from all media an hour or two before bed, warm baths, warm drinks, and a good book. It’s a poor idea to catch the 11 o’clock news before you drift off, as well. Caffeine can be a culprit here. Interestingly enough, alcohol is a sleep disruptor, too. It may knock you out for a couple of hours, but it is common to awaken later and have difficulty resettling.

7. Develop a stillness practice. Meditation is a great tool for calming the mind and helping bring higher levels of relaxation to the body. Current science is telling us more every day about the substantial changes meditation can make in actual brain function and creativity, well beyond the benefits of general relaxation. The common response I have from people I work with is, “I could never meditate. I can’t still my mind or stop thinking.” The thing is there are many ways to meditate that don’t require you to empty your mind first. I often refer my clients to the work of George Quant and his Quantum Meditation techniques. George has a great appreciation for the body and the busy nature of our minds.There are many forms of meditation. Try a few and see which one fits you best.

8. Yoga. Gentle stretching and in particular a practice such as yoga can do a great deal to promote well-being within the body and nervous system. In this case, I coach my clients to find a yoga studio that feels comfortable for them and advise them to avoid gyms and venues where it is about speed and/or doing the postures perfectly. There’s even a form of yoga called “Laughing Yoga” (yes, it’s a real thing).

9. Do the things you enjoy. Speaking of laughing, it’s worth making the point that the most anxious of us may have forgotten or lost track of the things that bring us pleasure. Pleasure can be a real healing agent in our lives. Particularly the simple pleasures. Rediscover what you enjoy doing and start doing it. Even a little of it. It’s a very high form of self-care. Many Anxious Folk have never been good at taking care of themselves, prioritizing their needs, or even slowing down enough to figure out what those needs and desires are. Incorporating a few simple pleasures back into your life is a great place to start your self-care plan.

10.Educate yourself. There are lots of great books out there on anxiety. One that I recommend to people I work with is ­Dancing With Fear, by Paul Foxman. Foxman provides a great explanation for the formation of anxiety as well as tons of self-help tools.

11.Consider getting a therapist.Very often our habits of anxious thought are deeply engrained. It can be very helpful to reach out to a trained therapist for support. When you do, consider choosing a therapist who knows anxiety inside out and is used to working with highly stressed people. While you can help yourself cope a little better by the daily use of tools like those listed here, a therapist can help you sniff out and address the deeper patterns driving your anxious experience over all. You don’t have to do it alone.

IS ANXIETY ROBBING YOU BLIND? Like any good thief, Anxiety is pretty stealthy. It can be nipping at our heels for a long time before we recognize what it is and realize it has run off with our wallet of well-being and joy. Anxiety is quite the pick pocket, but there is something you can do about it.HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN ANXIETY HAS PULLED A FAST ONE ON YOU? When you are caught in cycles of negative, intrusive, repetitive, scary thoughts that are carrying you down the Rabbit Hole, chances are, Anxiety is doing a number on you. When you're experiencing high states of arousal (not the good kind!) in your body (such as, racing heart, racing thoughts, catastrophic thinking, butterflies or something more on the order of upset Pterodactyls in your tummy, profuse sweating, dizziness, inability to focus, states of complete overwhelm, high levels of stress, high levels of irritability, panic, and more) and you're finding it difficult or emotionally painful to manage your day to day life, chances are you're in the clutches of Anxiety. WHEN YOU WAKE UP AND REALIZE ANXIETY HAS OVERWHELMED YOU AND NUMBED YOU OUT TO YOUR JOY, BALANCE, AND THE ABILITY TO SEE WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOING WELL IN YOUR LIFE, IT IS TIME TO CALL THE PO PO! There are steps you can take to start to set things right.1. PAUSE. Noticing you're in your Anxious Cycle is half the battle. In my view of things, although Anxiety may be a Pick Pocket, it is really on your side. Anxiety is looking after you, trying to avoid painful situations, and working hard to get your attention. When Anxiety raises its ugly head and starts to harass you, you know it's time to move into Deep Self-Care. Now. So, Pause, notice you are in your Anxious Process and start to attend to your body and mind-state in very specific ways. These can include some good conscious breathing, noticing the stories you are telling yourself and noticing the way your body is responding to these anxious negative stories, distraction, a change in activity, reaching out and calling a friend.2. ORIENT. I know this sounds weird, but orienting to your surroundings is just good ol' CavePerson 101 self-care. So, pause, take a good slow look around the space you are in. Notice what your eye is drawn to and notice how your body responds to that. Our old mammal-self likes to have a handle on where we are and if we're in a safe non-threatening environment or not. So, scope it out. We're actually orienting to our environment all the time, but doing so on the unconscious level. When we make orienting conscious and slow it down, the body responds by relaxing into a greater sense of safety. Translation: less anxious. Woot! To support this process further, sit in a chair or stand against a wall, if possible. Notice your feet are on the ground, notice where they feel the heaviest (heels, toes, sides of feet), notice your butt is anchored in the chair, and your back is supported (and therefore protected from attack--I told you, this is CavePerson 101 stuff--it's wired into the Old Brain), and notice where the exits to the room are. You've just told your body you are safe, your back isn't exposed to predators or the marauding hordes, who have come to steal your meat, women, or children. And if you need an escape route, you've identified it already. Relaxation CavePeson-Style. True Story. It works. 3. PRACTICE. Grab whatever (healthy) tools that have worked for you in the past for relaxing such, as moderate exercise, meditation, prayer, deep breathing, walking, music, art, your pet, etc.) and practice them. Daily. Not just when you are stressed out. Hunt around and see what others you might pick up (such as, yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi Gong, playing an instrument, Progressive Muscle Relaxation). YouTube is great for stuff like this.

4. OR RING ME UP AND COME IN. I have a ton of tools I can teach you for helping to improve the quality of your life, work through your Anxious experience, and set yourself on the course to feeling better and I'd love to share them with you.

Anxiety. When overwhelming Anxiety is running your life, pushing you, depleting you, exhausting you, running you into the ground, the last thought you're likely entertaining is, "Anxiety is my friend." What the heck kind of thing is that for me to say, anyway? How could Anxiety be your friend? We all know Anxiety is causing untold pain and loss in the world. Maybe even in your life. In fact, some 83% of ER visits are said to have their cause in Anxious Experience, either directly, through panic attacks, or indirectly through stress related health conditions, of which there are about, oh, one million or so. Many of them killers in the long-term. Er, now, that's a happy thought. Nevermind. Sorry! Let's get back to the Anxiety can be your friend thing! So. Chances are, Anxiety is causing you real pain. Right now. Physical pain, emotional pain, financial burden, or undue wear and tear on your primary relationships. What is there to do about it? Is there anything you can do?Until we learn to dance with Anxiety, it is our master and not our pal. Once we understand Anxious Experience is merely a symptom, a signal, that too much is going on and our nervous system is in overwhelm, then we can do something about it. You're not going to be able to outrun your Anxious Experience for long, although if you're like most Anxious Folk, you'll sure as heck try. You'll try and talk yourself out of your feelings and sensations, using tons of logic and when that doesn't work, and it almost never does, you'll resort to Shame and Guilt. This is a nasty, ugly, painful business. Or, you'll try and control your thoughts with you Big Bad Will Power (which is almost always well-developed in Anxious Folk and often pointed at our favorite and most painful target: Perfectionism. Perfectionism-In-All-Things and her ugly sister Procrastination, otherwise known as Waiting-Until-It-Can-Be-Perfect or her alter ego, It-Never-Will-Be-Perfect-So-Why-Start?). You may try and out run your Anxious Experience through tons of exercise, over-working, over-drinking, or over-drugging, sexing, or eating. Don't forget gaming, gambling, shopping, or porn. Oh! Or morphing into The-Super-I-Can't-Feel-Good-On-The-Inside-Until-It's-All-Perfect-On-The-Outside-House-Cleaning-Genie. That's a common one. Generally a relationship killer, as Clean Freak Anxious Folk aren't happy until everyone is on board with their super clean thing. Most Anxious Folk are also really nice folk. We cornered the market on care-taking, over-giving at our own expense, and the Worried Style of Loving. There's nothing Anxious Folk like better than "helping" someone. Or fixing someone's life, diet, car, or relationships. Anything that takes us away from our own feelings for a few minutes will provide some relief from Anxiety. Alternatively, you might get burly with Anxiety and attempt to just push your anxious thoughts away. Or use distraction, which actually isn't a half bad strategy in the short-term, but sooner or later you let your guard down and viola´ Anxiety marches right back into view, because it never left in the first place. It just took a seat and waited nearby.

The truth is, if you are part of the Anxious Folk Tribe, you've already tried everything you know to reduce your anxious experience and it hasn't worked well enough, long enough, or may never have worked at all. As long as we're engaged in a struggle to eradicate Anxiety as if it were the enemy, we're going to be fighting a losing battle. And a heart breaking one. For one thing, anxious response is part of our innate survival mechanism, so it ain't going anywhere. All the same, Anxiety shouldn't be running the show. When Anxiety becomes a problem you'll find yourself stuck in uncomfortable, persistent, anxious states, unable to break the pattern in any lasting meaningful way. This unlikely moment is the exact time when you should befriend Anxiety, grab it by its sweaty hand, bring it to the table, and get the Peace Talks started. Immediately.

What if Anxiety is merely the White Flag? The signal you need additional, deep, high-voltage Self Care? What if the primary purpose of Overwhelming Anxiety is to get your attention, get you focused, and get you working on restoring your body and the balance in your life? What if your body has been whispering to you for years, asking for a break and you never slowed down enough to hear it? What if it's time to start saying, "No" to some of the dozens of things you have taken on in your life? Time to step back from all the over-working, over-doing, over-giving, self-sacrificing ways of being in the world? What if Anxiety were trying to tell you it's time to learn about Self Care that includes, yet goes far beyond exercise and decent nutrition, and all the way to learning how to manage your thoughts, nervous system, and boundaries? What if Anxiety is asking you to be present to yourself and your life in a whole new way? Really present in your relationships? Fully available for intimacy? If this is true, then Anxiety is your Friend. Anxiety is speaking just as loudly as it needs to speak in order to get your attention. No louder. The louder Anxiety speaks, the more clear it is you need much more Self Care. After all, truth telling, even uncomfortable truths, is the kind of support only the best of friends will give you. If Anxiety is speaking to you now, it is time to listen. You can use a friend like this. You can use Anxiety. Anxiety can become the tool you dig your way out of this pain and confusion with, rather than the thing that is busy burying you alive. Grab it.

Author

I'm Victoria Wallace Schlicht. I'm a licensed California Marriage and Family Therapist and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), which is something like a Nervous Systems Whisperer but without the white cowboy hat. I specialize in Anxiety reduction and trauma resolution. I have a multi-faceted, normalizing, non-pathologizing approach to the human experience. I just don't get the need to label folks as sick or broken. Let's face it, nearly everyone you know is either experiencing highly anxious states or has had a brush with anxiety in the past. How do I know? Well, for one thing we are living in a world that is veering out of control along several fronts. If you're not stressed out, you're simply not paying attention or you've mastered this plane of experience. We're dealing with higher levels of change at more rapid pace than at any time in our known history. We weren't designed for this kind of stress. We weren't designed to feel as if we are constantly trying to out run the Sabre-Toothed Tiger at our heels. Our over-functioning is running us down. We need a different viewpoint. New tools. Better tools. And I have them. Or at least a big pile of them. And I love to talk about them. A lot. In fact, you can't shut me up. So, I've finally gone and built a bully pulpit of my own. We'll be unwinding the mystery of Anxious experience every week Right here. Enjoy! I'm the author of Thriving in a Chaotic World, a voluminous audio information product for reducing anxious experience and produce a monthly eZine. Opt-in here to receive Thriving News